Custom Label Printing:
Frequently Asked Questions

All of them! It’s easy to get tangled up in shop-talk in the printing business – four color process, spot colors, 8 color presses, 10 station presses, digital, inkjet, Pantone®, CMYK, RGB. The list goes on. Among our pre-press staff, our press operators and our QA team, there’s a resounding promise: We will get your colors right. How we get to the exact hue you need for one job might be very different from how we produce that very same hue on a different job we run for you. So many factors – application conditions, materials, environmental considerations, exposure to the elements and more – can affect the choices to be made in producing a label. The best thing we can say up front is that we know we can get the color right, every time. And, we will get it right in a label that will meet your other important requirements, too.

The equipment that we use affords us the flexibility to make labels in pretty much any shape you might need. Through the years we have enjoyed working with customers who have had some very unusual shape requirements. It’s always a pleasure when we can surprise and delight someone by delivering just what they imagined! As with most things, there are some practical considerations with shapes. The more intricate the design, the harder the finished labels are to handle and apply. For example, a sunburst with seven straight rays will be much easier to remove from a liner and apply smoothly to a surface than a sunburst with twenty-seven curling rays. There’s also the practical consideration of the cost of making special tooling to achieve your unusual shape idea. If your labels can be made using some tooling that we already have, that usually helps to keep your costs in check.

Digital printing allows for variable, custom labels in small quantities. But there are still minimum setup costs that would make those dinner party nametags cost prohibitive. You can likely print those 12 labels more cost-effectively off your desk-top printer at home.

As a general rule, more is better. If you plan to use 120,000 labels within a year, you’re better off ordering them all at once than calling every two weeks to order six thousand pieces. And, if your business thrives so your needs grow to 1.2 million or 12 million labels per year, you’ll probably like what that will mean for your price on a per label basis. That said, we make plenty of beautiful labels for customers who need much smaller quantities – sometimes as few as 100 pieces.

The best label material always is one that is suited to your application. There’s no single best label base material. For some applications a paper label would be an absolute disaster; for others nothing else would be even remotely as good as a paper label. We commonly use a variety of papers, polypropylene, polyester, vinyl or other materials to make labels. The story only begins with the base material, though. A great looking label made with the wrong adhesive or lacking a coating needed to protect its finish would not be a good thing. An essential part of our craft is devising the best label construction for your design and application requirements.

Just as the labels are made to your specifications, we are able to make rolls essentially whatever size you might need. Many things go into both the size of the rolls and the size of the cores the rolls form around. When applying labels by machine, there will be roll size specifications set by the equipment manufacturer. Some equipment will work best with a roll that includes a setup leader. When labels are to be hand-applied, other considerations, such as the ability to comfortably hold onto the roll, will be important. So, how many? Just as many as you need! How a label is formatted can make a big impact on your label price. Let us help you with a solution that meets your handling needs at the best possible price.

Of course you have options! We want to deliver products that meet your needs. We can package your labels in sheets, as individual pieces and other ways, too. We’ve also done projects where we made package components and labels for a particular product and delivered them as kits with each kit containing all of the labels and packaging for each individual unit.

Of course! We love to solve problems like this. A great way to address this kind of challenge is with a folded booklet approach. A great way to address this kind of challenge is with a folded coupon approach. You’ve seen those packages with an area that says “peel here”, and when you do the label unfolds into a mini accordion or maybe a booklet, right? We are really good at making those and we have made them in many different sizes and shapes – even circles!

Yes. It’s very important that we know what you plan to apply your labels to and how you expect the labels to perform. An adhesive that will hold a label fast to a paperboard carton might not be right for holding the same label to a garment but allow for easy removal (without residue) when the consumer gets it home. Some surfaces are less receptive to adhesives than others. If we know enough about what you’re working with and how you want the label to perform, we can design a label solution best suited to what you are doing.